Pimatic & Node 8.0

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@momatic said in Pimatic & Node 8.0:

Node.js 10.x with long therm support has been released

Thats’s misleading. The announcement states, it “will become the new active Long Term Support release line”. According to the schedule LTS start is planned for October 2018. So, the LTS version for the next 6 months is v8.

EDIT: While v10 has already passed the development stages (v9), I expect it will require a few more weeks to mature, the new ABI in particular. The N-API is said to add ABI-stability which should simplify the job for maintainers of modules with native code integration. It is a bit of an irony Nodejs required 7 major releases as they say (btw, I am counting to get the ABI right, and that’s just a promise for now. We will see.

@momatic as @michbeck100 said earlier, his fork branch can be used for testing. So, feel to give it a try and report back with your findings. This will be highly appreciated.

@michbeck100 I’d like to try out your node_v8 branch, but I don’t know how to install pimatic from a repo instead of using the npm.
I have done/tried the following steps:

1. Installed node v8.12.0
2. Cloned pimatic branch node_v8
3. Run install bash scripts

Could you please help me to get your version running?

How stable is it?

@temp pimatic itself was running the last time I tried. Main problem will be the plugins. Every single one must be updated I guess. But the changes are backwards compatible AFAIK.

@momatic the install scripts are not needed.

$ sudo node node-modules/pimatic/pimatic.js

should do the trick. I’m not in front of my pc now, so I can’t try myself.
If you want to run it in the background then just replace your original pimatic folder with the branch, add your config.json and start with

$ sudo service pimatic start

I guess that should do the trick. Please just rename your original pimatic installation to be sure

@michbeck100 said in Pimatic & Node 8.0:

@temp pimatic itself was running the last time I tried. Main problem will be the plugins. Every single one must be updated I guess. But the changes are backwards compatible AFAIK.

Why not writing all people to change their plugin code to node v8.0???

@michbeck100 said in Pimatic & Node 8.0:

@temp pimatic itself was running the last time I tried. Main problem will be the plugins. Every single one must be updated I guess. But the changes are backwards compatible AFAIK.

Could you explain more detailed why you think so? Why every single plugin needs to be updated?
Is there already an overview with working and not working plugins so that it would be easier for others to test whats working?

@dasmaetthes If you look at this commit for example, you’ll see that node version > 4 doesn’t “compile” if some things are missing. Most of the changes i had to do in pimatic to get it running with node 8 were like this.
And you’ll find these problems in most, if not all plugins, too. But these changes still work with node 4, thats why i think that we don’t need special versions for node 4 and node 8.

Is there already an overview with working and not working plugins so that it would be easier for others to test whats working?

The overview is pretty easy, AFAIK there is no plugin that incorporates the needed changes, yet.

So the main problem is that no one started yet to update his plugins for node.js > 4. Pimatic itself would work?

@michbeck100 said in Pimatic & Node 8.0:

@mwittig did a short test with node v6 and v8 today. I found some glitches, had to update some dependencies but overall it doesn’t look too bad. Could you explain, what the biggest problems are?

BTW: if anyone wants to try: https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic/tree/node_v8

I didn’t do any bigger testing, so be prepared that not everything will be working. Just make sure to do a clean install of pimatic.

Like i said, everyone is free to test my branch for node 8, i didn’t have the time to test it, yet.

@michbeck100 said in Pimatic & Node 8.0:

Could you explain, what the biggest problems are?

As said earlier, I think the biggest hurdle is to partially rewrite the plugin management which currently relies on deprecated features of Npm 2, like the hierarchical placement of dependencies in the file system. May be it is not too bad, but it needs a closer look and thought.

How about the mobile frontend? Did you look at this, too? When I tried pimatic with node 8 based on your branch it seemed to work fine, but obviously it was just running the compiled/transformed JS code. So, when this is built from source I expect one will also run into some issues. Some packages use by the front are completely EOL and the code needs to be ported/migrated to alternative packages.

If you have some to work on this in the future may be we can liaise at some point and jointly work on this. I think I can find some days in November to work on this.

@michbeck100 any comments?

@mwittig Sorry, missed your comment. No, i didn’t look closer to the frontend. You are probably right. But since the frontend is also just a plugin, it would have to be migrated like the other plugins, too. But it could certainly be the plugin with the most effort.
Regarding time to work on this, i could maybe spend some days on this, but i can’t tell for sure.

But i guess you agree, if i say that we should start and see what happens. Maybe you want to create an “official” branch for the migration of pimatic core? This would be to solve the npm problems, and afterwards we can start and migrate one plugin after the other. I think it will be same tasks in most plugins, so we can create a “HOWTO” for plugin developers, after migrating the first plugins.

That sounds like a plan. +1

Hello,
is there any way PIMATIC to install new? The guide https://pimatic.org/guide/getting-started/installation/ does not work for me.

VG

Ingo

@xs400 Could you be a lit bit more specific? What happens when you try the guide?

Hi,
there is nothing in the config.json

Error writing /home/pimatic-app/config.json: No such file or directory

@xs400 Did you copy the config.json?

cd pimatic-app
cp ./node_modules/pimatic/config_default.json ./config.json

Ja,
root@raspberrypi:~# cd pimatic-app
root@raspberrypi:~/pimatic-app#
root@raspberrypi:~/pimatic-app# cp ./node_modules/pimatic/config_default.json ./config.json
cp: cannot stat ‘./node_modules/pimatic/config_default.json’: No such file or directory

@xs400 This is definitely no problem with node in version 4, nor node at all. Please read the installation guide carefully again. Or create a new topic for this.
I’ve followed the guide a few days ago and did not have any problems at all.